Reading books and navigating your library

In this movie, we're going to getto the most important part of the Kindle.It's time to read some books.We'll start with the bare essentials, then workour way up to some more detailed features.I want to start on the homepage,so make sure, if you're not on the homepage,that you hit the Home button to get there.I can see a list of the books that I've purchased, here.I can swipe through them to go to the next page,and I can swipe back to go to the previous.Or, if your Kindle does not have a touchscreen,you can use the Next Page and Previous Pagebuttons to flip between these pages.

To open a book, I just tap on it.On a non-touchscreen Kindle, just usethe direction pad to select the book you want.And now the book is open.All I need to do to read is to swipe or usethe page flip buttons to go to the next or previous page.On the touchscreen Kindle, I can also simply tapon the right side to go to the next page,or on the left side to go to the previous page.When you finish with the book,or you want to do something else,you need to use the navigation buttons.To bring these buttons up on a touchscreen Kindle,just tap somewhere near the top edge of the screen,and you get those on-screen controls.

On other Kindles, of course, you havephysical buttons on the front.One of the great things about using a Kindlecompared to a physical book is that you canchange the size of the text as you read.So I'm gonna hit the Text button here,and we get some controls for the font and text size.On some other Kindles, there's an optionto change the font size under the menu.On those devices, you'll just have to open upthe menu, then find that option.But here, I can just tap the Text button.So I can choose the font size I likejust by tapping on these sizes.

You can see now my text is much bigger.I might have to close this window to see just how big it is.You can see when I flipto the next page, the text is really big.I'll bring up my on-screen controls again,go back to Font, and let's make it really small.You can see that makes the text really small.I'm gonna go ahead and reset thisto something kind of in the middle.I think that'll work out well.Of course, we can change which font we want to use.Since I'm reading Sherlock Holmes,maybe I want to switch to Baskervilles.

You can see that the text changes.I'm gonna switch back to the default.When I'm finished, I can either hit the X here,or just tap somewhere outside of that panel to close it.If you're using a Kindle with physical buttons,you might just hit the Back button to leave that panel.Now, as you go through the book,you might want to skip ahead or jump backmore than a single page at a time.To do that, you want to go to the Go To option.This is another option that's under the menuon most Kindles, but on a touchscreen Kindle, you've gotthe Go To button right here on the on-screen controls.

I'm gonna go ahead and hit Go To.If the book has a table of contents,you can scroll through that here.Then just tap on whichever chapter you might want to go to.You can see it jumps me straightto the page where that chapter starts.I'm gonna bring up the on-screen controls again.I'll go back to Go To.If you want to go to a specific pageor location, you can choose that here.Page or Location.Then type in a page number or a location number here.For example, I might choose something like 250,and this is a location number, so I'll hit Location.

I'll go back into that, go back into Go To,back into Page and Location.I want to talk about the differencebetween Page and Location.As you change the font size, the amount of texton a page can change, which makes workingwith page numbers a little confusing.So Kindles include the option to use location numbersinstead, which is just a number that's assignedto a specific section of the book,regardless of the text size.If a location number coincideswith a specific paragraph, it willalways be tied to that paragraph,no matter what the text size is set to.

So you might want to start thinking aboutlocation numbers on your Kindle rather than page numbers.In fact, this particular book only gives me the optionfor location, it doesn't even use pages.I'll go ahead and cancel this to get out of this interface.One more thing you might want to doas you're going through your book is do a search.I'll bring up my on-screen buttons again,and I'll hit the Search button here.Of course, you might find this under themenu on your non-touchscreen Kindle.One of my favorite characters in theSherlock Holmes books is Inspector Lestrade.

Let's see if they mention Inspector Lestrade in this book.All I need to do is make sure I'm in thistext field, and then just start typing.When I'm done typing, I'll just hit the Return button,and here I get a list of all of the pageswhere they mention Inspector Lestrade.Of course, I can scroll throughjust by swiping with my finger.If I find one of these I want to look at, I just touch on itand it'll take me straight to that page.It has that word highlightedon the page, so I can find it easily.

That's all I need to do to searchfor a specific word in my book.Those are the basic functions for reading a book.That's all you really need to doto dive in and do some reading.When you're done, you just go back to the homescreen.So I'll just touch on the top of the screen to bring upthe on-screen controls, and I'll hit the Home button.There we are, back at the homescreen.I can see all of my books.I can open up any of them and do some reading.

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Author

Updated

7/23/2014

Released

7/2/2014

Learn how to set up and use the world's most popular ereader so you can have the best digital reading experience ever. Nick Brazzi explores the different Kindle models and shows how to best get around in the interface, no matter which one you have. Quickly learn how to read, bookmark, and add notes to your ebooks with ease. You'll also see how to buy ebooks from the Amazon website and from the Kindle, learn some maintenance tips, and explore accessories as well as some resources for free ebooks.